The Lipster

Hair colour is a battlefield. Think back to the flack that Amy Winehouse got for daring to bleach her hair a few months back. Now Lily Allen has done the same thing - trading in her glossy chestnut locks for a strawberry blonde shade - and is also getting short shrift from the tabloids because of it.

It's a crazy thought, but shouldn't people be allowed to do what they like with their own hair, just like they should be allowed to wear the clothes they want? Since my every move isn't under the scrutiny of the tabloids, I've been freely allowed to do with my locks as I wish. As a natural mousey brown – at least I think that's my natural hair colour, I haven't seen more than an inch of the roots of my normal hair shade since the age of 14 - I've been through every vaguely natural hair colour going. Sheer laziness has meant I've steered clear of the purples, greens and blues of the hair dying world, as trips to the hairdressers every other week is a little too much even for me. Here is my hair-story.

Blonde

I'd dabbled with the old Sun-In at school with disastrous results - you know that it never, ever stops working until you cut the damn stuff out? I soon realised that highlighted blonde wasn't for me, but Gwen Stefani-style, Jean Harlow-esque white blonde with Courtney Love roots most certainly was. Someone should have told me about the pain, though. Bleaches are a killer. It's a bit like someone pouring acid onto your head, which I suppose is what's actually happening. Did I have more fun as a blonde? Well, I was 18, didn't have any bills to pay, was on a course that meant I had about four hours of work to do a week and had a different disco to go to every night, so yes, probably. Was I treated like a bimbo? By the good people who judge others on what comes out of their mouths rather than what's on their head, yes.

Brunette

I went to brunette straight from bleached white blonde, and literally had to go around re-introducing myself to a whole slice of my acquaintances, as half-friends failed to recognise me. Now, despite the fact that recent "research" by Lycos has worked out that 62% of billionaires marry women with brown hair, not once was I approached by a loaded gent with an offer of marriage and a yacht to call my own. Maybe it was because I was hanging out in Camden and not Chelsea. Either way, brown was not for me.

Black

This was a mistake. Instead of a lush raven mane of the Bettie Page, Nigella Lawson and Morticia Adams ilk, I just looked ill.

Auburn

I was going for a kind of pre-Raphaelite thing here - minus the flowing velvet dresses and laudanum addiction, though. It was good, but it was brief, because ginger was calling...

Ginger

My current state of hair affairs is ginger. So far, its on a par with bleached blonde as my favourite, despite the fact that there's a man who drives a rubbish truck (that's a truck that collects rubbish, not just a really lame truck) near me, who will, without fail, shout 'oi, ginger!' at me every time I walk past him on my way to work. And though apparently gingers are the least likely of all the hair colours to score a billionaire, I've got far better things to think about, so Lycos, you know what you can do with your survey.

Now it's your turn. Hair dye tales at the ready...